In Gleneagles Hotel’s example, we could see that it is not a bad business to invest in golf clubs. Diageo sold in July 2015 Gleneagles Hotel to Ennismore for cca. £150m. Now another alcoholic beverage company, the Japanese Asahi Group Holding thought it is worth to invest £2 million to develop and improve its Buckinghamshire Golf Club.
Buckinghamshire Golf Club asked beforehand Thomson Perret and Lobb (TPL) to show them what should be improved in their golf course.
Check out the details are below the picture…
Question: Is £2 million enough to become a tournament golf course?
So based on the findings of Thomson Perret and Lobb‘s survey, Buckinghamshire Golf Club will:
- build a reservoir (for the sake of sustainability);
- add buggy paths;
- installing a new sophisticated irrigation system (e.g. advanced new sprinkler system to reduce wastage).
- redesign the lakes on the 7th and 8th holes and many bunkers will be relocated and lined
- get a new irrigation system to achieve golf tournament standard conditions.
I see they give quite a big attention to smart usage of water. I would welcome (happy to hear) the usage of sensor technology, including in-ground sensors that monitor soil moisture in real time. Other interesting sensor technology solution could be the TDR sensors to manually detect moisture levels. I think both systems can be helpful if they are used regularly.
Data driven golf course management is not totally new to the golf industry. Here I would highlight OnGolf a cloud-based decision-making platform. OnGolf enables golf courses to fine tune their water usage.
The course improvement work will be spread over the next two winters to minimize disruption to golfers, with an anticipated project completion date of March 2017. The works will start on November 30th. It will be carried out by Profusion Environmental and AT Bone.
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